“The Funeral” by Tayler Hodges

I stood at the back of the crowd on the mushy, sodden grass. The smell of fresh turned dirt and rain mingled, as I watched them lower the casket into the freshly dug hole. Only one question remained; how am I going to take this secret to my own grave? It was Derrick who told me that his friend Nathan had died. Derrick had said something about how he had died from blunt force trauma. They found him in the alleyway behind his job. He was feet away from making it to his car. “That sounds gruesome, I am so sorry,” I said. It is true that it sounded like a gruesome way to die, but I wasn’t sorry that he was dead. Nathan worked at a local coffee shop. It was my favorite coffee shop, but I couldn’t go there anymore after what he did to me. All it took was waiting in my car across the street to figure out what days he worked, and when he got off of work. I watched him come into work laughing with his friends. Nathan was my friend once. He was the kind of friend that always made jokes. The jokes were funny… until they weren’t anymore. Everybody knew that he always joked around, but his jokes were different when he was alone with me. I tried to tell Derrick about the jokes, but he didn’t believe me. His friend had been nothing but pleasant to him, so why should he believe me? I watched as Nathan walked out of the coffee shop door, locking it behind him. It was kind of ironic that a guy who joked about rape so much, didn’t walk around with a sense of caution when the sun set, and the world was dark. I skulked behind him in my black hoodie, as I watched him waltz down the sidewalk with not a care in the world. I knew that he parked his car around back behind the coffee shop, so I decided that I had to get to him before he could make it to his car. Only a dark alleyway separated Nathan from his car, and me from spending my life behind bars. Something told me to stop at the corner before entering the alleyway. As I stood peering around the corner, my phone began to ring. Leaving my ringer on was a rookie mistake. I mean, I am not a murderer after all. I silenced my phone, but when I looked back up Nathan was not the only person standing in the alleyway. At the other end of the dark corridor stood a hooded figure. The only thing about him that caught my attention was the bat he held down by his side. “I promise I will pay you back,” Nathan sputtered as the hooded figure grew larger in my vision as he crept down the alleyway. Nathan began to back away down the alleyway, but he couldn’t have known that I was waiting on the other end for him. He turned to run, but he didn’t get very far. My foot connected with his ankle, and I watched as he landed spread eagle on the concrete. I turned in the direction that I had come, and I sprinted away as fast as I could. I couldn’t help but hear the crack of the bat and the moans that erupted as the bat connected with Nathan’s body. The sound of dirt covering the casket brought me back from my stupor. I looked up in time to see a hooded figure watching me from across the cemetery.